The U.K.’s cherished public health service is in danger of being sold off to private corporations via a trade deal that would create a single market between the European Union and the United States and open future British governments to massive lawsuits in international courts should they attempt to reverse the decision.

The proposal is another example of a country’s elite selling out institutions that are necessary to the public welfare for the sake of maintaining and increasing its own wealth and power.

For those who don't know of what I speak: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianismIn inverted totalitarianism, every natural resource and every living being is commodified and exploited to collapse and the citizenry are lulled and manipulated into surrendering their liberties and their participation in their government by excess consumerism and sensationalism.

Any confusion over TTIP appears mostly based upon Labour party politics and Union lobbying about exclusions.....or lack thereof.

European official commits to safeguarding NHS in EU-US trade deal
European commission negotiator allays fears about impact of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership on the NHS

Quote:

Healey said the commission letter should answer fears in the Labour movement about the threat to the NHS. Healey told the Guardian: "This letter confirms that the NHS can be fully exempted in any TTIP deal. Now it is for UK ministers and EU negotiators to make sure that the commitments the lead negotiator is making are put in place in full. This letter confirms that the biggest threat to the NHS is the Tories not TTIP."

The former minister spoke out after the European commission moved to allay fears about the impact of the trade deal on the NHS. Bercero wrote that:

• Bilateral agreements made by the EU exclude or contain specific reservations "for publicly funded health services".
He wrote: "This policy space means that member states do not need to provide access to their markets for foreign companies and even if they do
give access they can discriminate between foreign companies and EU / domestic ones."

• EU member states are entitled to maintain and adopt new measures to control access to their health service market by foreign suppliers.
"The EU does not intend to change its approach to health services in trade negotiations for TTIP."

• EU members states face no restrictions on "liberalising the health sector nor from deliberalising it". He wrote: "The EU does not intend to change its
approach to public procurement for health services in TTIP."

Bercero concluded: "We can already state with confidence that any ISDS provisions in TTIP could have no impact on the UK's sovereign right to make
changes to the NHS. I hope that this information clearly demonstrates that there is no reason for fear either for the NHS as it stands today, or for
changes to the NHS in future, as a result of TTIP."

"The most significant effect will be felt in health, enabling US healthcare multinationals and Wall Street investors to sue the UK government in secret courts if it attempts to reverse privatisation. David Cameron can exempt the NHS from these trade negotiations. Unless the prime minister acts, bureaucrats in Brussels and Washington will make the sell-off of our NHS irreversible."

Healey said of the transatlantic deal: "Even on the most measured assessment it could be worth an extra £4bn a year to Britain's GDP."

This really doesn't inspire confidence for me. It sounds more like they're getting the privatization wedge under the door and promising not to start driving it in with a hammer. "Oh, we'll just tap it in a little. You'll see. It will be alright." I have no doubt that somebody down the road will be coming along with a big hammer. The same thing will happen in the fight to privatize SS in the U.S. It will come in little pieces.

I'm about half way through Sheldon Wolin's book, "Democracy, Inc." and he makes a convincing argument that a long game is being played here; a game that started shortly after WWII. There are no evil geniuses, tyrants and conspirators behind the game. That's one of the reasons it's "inverted" totalitarianism. It's simply the evolution of greed at work. Those who have use what they have to buy power. Then, they find it's never enough and they need more. Piece by piece, they divvy up the world.

Remember the Wall Streeters taunting the Occupy movement with champagne?
That's the ethos at work here: We know better than you what to do with the world. Just quiet down and enjoy it, because it's going to happen whether you like it or not.

I'm guessing the European health care system is a test case before going after, and finally destroying, the American social safety net.

The other part of Wolin's thesis is that we live in a "managed democracy." The government is "legitimated by an electoral process they control." Hard to argue against that thesis since Bush v Gore.

You could really see evidence for this when they polled Wall Street regarding their presidential preferences. If it was Jeb Bush/Hillary, they'd go Bush. If it was Paul/Hillary, they'd go Hillary. Their top two preferences were Bush and Hillary. In other words, party is meaningless.

The other part of Wolin's thesis is that we live in a "managed democracy." The government is "legitimated by an electoral process they control." Hard to argue against that thesis since Bush v Gore.

You could really see evidence for this when they polled Wall Street regarding their presidential preferences. If it was Jeb Bush/Hillary, they'd go Bush. If it was Paul/Hillary, they'd go Hillary. Their top two preferences were Bush and Hillary. In other words, party is meaningless.

Of course. Jeb & Hillary are both Corporatists. Rand Paul is not. If Rand were to actually gain any traction nationally, he would have to be dealt with.

They key you're once again missing. Whether you're talking Corporate leaders or Political leaders, the same ethos is at work.

For the same reason you support breaking up Corporate monopolies, you should be very skeptical of Federal ones.

In a working democracy, the people are engaged and can vote their representatives in, and out of office. In corporate monopolies, only a very small segment of the corporate population, the board members, have that capacity.

Please don't take the above as an endorsement of Rand Paul or Libertarianism.

The whole philosophy of how the world could take care of itself without government is just so incredibly naive, and would ultimately play into the hands of the Corporate Elite.

But Rand is earning his spurs as a Reformer, so if he were actually elected, he could cause problems. So if he ever gains any real traction, he will be dealt with.

At its base, questions of governance and politics are the separate genius of mankind, which is why people like Plato, Socrates, etc. all the way up to Locke, Jefferson, etc. spent their lives pondering its questions.

In a working democracy, the people are engaged and can vote their representatives in, and out of office. In corporate monopolies, only a very small segment of the corporate population, the board members, have that capacity.

Come now. This is as naive as saying "If you don't like what Comcast does, nobody's forcing you to buy from them! If you don't like Exxon's decisions, you can buy voting stock!"

The problem with both Comcast and the Federal Government is that they've grown so far beyond accountable to their average constituent.

Our current climate is structured so that when California is in a 51% governing coalition, they get intimately involved with how Wyoming lives day to day. And as soon as Texas finds it way back into the 51%, people in New York will get introduced to a whole new approach to certain things.

Not because of any real representative Democratic consent. But because federal supremacy leads to the either/or. When Democrats are the 51%, they have no reason to care about the 49. Just like Comcast doesn't have to care when they know you're not going anywhere, like it or not.

Believe it or not, the founders didn't want the Federal Government so intimately involved in the day-to-day for this reason. The States were meant to handle most of what the federal government is involved in today. Because, in the spirit of the representative Democracy you're talking about, they're much more aware of and accountable to the will of their people.

Come now. This is as naive as saying "If you don't like what Comcast does, nobody's forcing you to buy from them! If you don't like Exxon's decisions, you can buy voting stock!"

The problem with both Comcast and the Federal Government is that they've grown so far beyond accountable to their average constituent.

Our current climate is structured so that when California is in a 51% governing coalition, they get intimately involved with how Wyoming lives day to day. And as soon as Texas finds it way back into the 51%, people in New York will get introduced to a whole new approach to certain things.

Not because of any real representative Democratic consent. But because federal supremacy leads to the either/or. When Democrats are the 51%, they have no reason to care about the 49. Just like Comcast doesn't have to care when they know you're not going anywhere, like it or not.

Believe it or not, the founders didn't want the Federal Government so intimately involved in the day-to-day for this reason. The States were meant to handle most of what the federal government is involved in today. Because, in the spirit of the representative Democracy you're talking about, they're much more aware of and accountable to the will of their people.

Except Wolin's thesis is that the federal government is doing what corporations tell it to do. When you attack the federal government, you're attacking the glove, not the hand that moves it. I'll repost this line from the OP: In inverted totalitarianism, every natural resource and every living being is commodified and exploited to collapse and the citizenry are lulled and manipulated into surrendering their liberties and their participation in their government by excess consumerism and sensationalism.

Interesting, that in the other thread I posted, one Silicon Valley wizard waxes poetic over the idea that soon "...everybody will be their own brand." Each individual will be responsible for their rating and reputation which will determine their value, ie. as a commodity.

Except Wolin's thesis is that the federal government is doing what corporations tell it to do. When you attack the federal government, you're attacking the glove, not the hand that moves it.

No offense, but this shares the same logical shortcoming I've been talking about.

A corporation is just a group of people acting in their own interest. Not really functionally any different than the government itself.

Corporations are one hand. Government is another. Sometimes they work together (for good or bad) Sometimes they fight against each other. Either will subvert the individual at any time it serves their purposes.

Politics, if we take politics to mean the shaping and discussion of issues, concerns and laws that foster the common good, is no longer the business of our traditional political institutions. These institutions, including the two major political parties, the courts and the press, are not democratic. They are used to crush any vestiges of civic life that calls, as a traditional democracy does, on its citizens to share among all its members the benefits, sacrifices and risks of a nation. They offer only the facade of politics, along with elaborate, choreographed spectacles filled with skillfully manufactured emotion and devoid of real political content. We have devolved into what Alexis de Tocqueville feared—“democratic despotism.”

The squabbles among the power elites, rampant militarism and the disease of imperialism, along with a mindless nationalism that characterizes all public debate, have turned officially sanctioned politics into a carnival act.

Pundits and news celebrities on the airwaves engage in fevered speculation about whether the wife of a former president will run for office—and this after the mediocre son of another president spent eight years in the White House. This is not politics. It is gossip. Opinion polls, the staple of what serves as political reporting, are not politics. They are forms of social control. The use of billions of dollars to fund election campaigns and pay lobbyists to author legislation is not politics. It is legalized bribery. The insistence that austerity and economic rationality, rather than the welfare of the citizenry, be the primary concerns of the government is not politics. It is the death of civic virtue. The government’s system of wholesale surveillance and the militarization of police forces, along with the psychosis of permanent war and state-orchestrated fear of terrorism, are not politics. They are about eradicating civil liberties and justifying endless war and state violence. The chatter about death panels, abortion, gay rights, guns and undocumented children crossing the border is not politics. It is manipulation by the power elites of emotion, hate and fear to divert us from seeing our own powerlessness.

“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country,” Edward Bernays observed in his 1928 book, “Propaganda.” “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
Politics in the hands of the corporate state is anti-politics. It is designed to denigrate and destroy the values that make a liberal democracy and political participation possible. It is a cynical form of mass control. Corporate money has replaced the vote. Dissent is silenced or ignored. Political parties are Punch and Judy shows funded by corporate puppeteers. Universities, once the epicenter of social change, are corporate headquarters, flush with corporate money, government contracts and foundation grants. The commercial press, whose primary task is attracting advertising dollars, has become an arm of the entertainment industry. It offers news as vaudeville. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...round_20140907

Inverted totalitarianism does not replicate past totalitarian structures, such as fascism and communism. It is therefore harder to immediately identify and understand. There is no blustering demagogue. There is no triumphant revolutionary party. There are no ideologically drenched and emotional mass political rallies. The old symbols, the old iconography and the old language of democracy are held up as virtuous. The old systems of governance—electoral politics, an independent judiciary, a free press and the Constitution—appear to be venerated. But, similar to what happened during the late Roman Empire, all the institutions that make democracy possible have been hollowed out and rendered impotent and ineffectual.

The corporate state, Wolin told me at his Oregon home, is “legitimated by elections it controls.” It exploits laws that once protected democracy to extinguish democracy; one example is allowing unlimited corporate campaign contributions in the name of our First Amendment right to free speech and our right to petition the government as citizens. “It perpetuates politics all the time,” Wolin said, “but a politics that is not political.” The endless election cycles, he said, are an example of politics without politics, driven not by substantive issues but manufactured political personalities and opinion polls. There is no national institution in the United States “that can be described as democratic,” he said.

The mechanisms that once allowed the citizen to be a participant in power—from participating in elections to enjoying the rights of dissent and privacy—have been nullified. Money has replaced the vote, Wolin said, and corporations have garnered total power without using the cruder forms of traditional totalitarian control: concentration camps, enforced ideological conformity and the physical suppression of dissent. They will avoid such measures “as long as that dissent remains ineffectual,” he said. “The government does not need to stamp out dissent. The uniformity of imposed public opinion through the corporate media does a very effective job.”

The state has obliterated privacy through mass surveillance, a fundamental precondition for totalitarian rule, and in ways that are patently unconstitutional has stripped citizens of the rights to a living wage, benefits and job security. And it has destroyed institutions, such as labor unions, that once protected workers from corporate abuse.

Inverted totalitarianism, Wolin has written, is “only in part a state-centered phenomenon.” It also represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry.”

Corporate power works in secret. It is unseen by the public and largely anonymous. Politicians and citizens alike often seem blissfully unaware of the consequences of inverted totalitarianism, Wolin said in the interview. And because it is a new form of totalitarianism we do not recognize the radical change that has gradually taken place. Our failure to grasp the new configuration of power has permitted the corporate state to rob us through judicial fiat, a process that culminates in a disempowered population and omnipotent corporate rulers. Inverted totalitarianism, Wolin said, “projects power upwards.” It is “the antithesis of constitutional power.”http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...evolt_20141019

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Wolin and Saul, echoing Karl Marx, view unfettered and unregulated capitalism as a revolutionary force that has within it the seeds of its own self-annihilation. It is and always has been deeply antagonistic to participatory democracy, they said. Democratic states must heavily regulate and control capitalism, for once capitalism is freed from outside restraint it seeks to snuff out democratic institutions and abolish democratic rights that are seen—often correctly—as an impediment to maximizing profit. The more ruthless and pronounced global corporate capitalism becomes, the greater the loss of democratic space.

“Capitalism is destructive because it has to eliminate customs, mores, political values, even institutions that present any kind of credible threat to the autonomy of the economy,” Wolin said. “That is where the battle lies. Capitalism wants an autonomous economy. It wants a political order subservient to the needs of the economy. The [capitalist’s] notion of an economy, while broadly based in the sense of a relatively free entrance and property that is relatively widely dispersed, is as elitist as any aristocratic system.”

“You need a professional or elite class devoted to profound change,” Saul said. “If you want to get power you have to be able to hold it. And you have to be able to hold it long enough to change the direction. The neoconservatives understood this. They have always been Bolsheviks. They are the Bolsheviks of the right. Their methodology is the methodology of the Bolsheviks. They took over political parties by internal coups d’état. They worked out, scientifically, what things they needed to do and in what order to change the structures of power. They have done it stage by stage. And we are living the result of that. The liberals sat around writing incomprehensible laws and boring policy papers. They were unwilling to engage in the real fight that was won by a minute group of extremists.” (ibid.)

“You need a professional or elite class devoted to profound change,” Saul said. “If you want to get power you have to be able to hold it. And you have to be able to hold it long enough to change the direction. The neoconservatives understood this. They have always been Bolsheviks. They are the Bolsheviks of the right. Their methodology is the methodology of the Bolsheviks. They took over political parties by internal coups d’état. They worked out, scientifically, what things they needed to do and in what order to change the structures of power. They have done it stage by stage. And we are living the result of that. The liberals sat around writing incomprehensible laws and boring policy papers. They were unwilling to engage in the real fight that was won by a minute group of extremists.” (ibid.)

Ain't that the truth?

They just laid down like hoes.

Obama had a chance to be a populist hero - instead he chose to be a zero.

Democracy is evaporating. In our globalized world, new forms of colonization are emerging, and popular control over decisions that affect people's freedom and well-being is becoming increasingly weaker. This can and must be stopped.

Democracy is primarily popular control. More precisely, democracy consists in people collectively having control over decisions that affect their well-being and their freedom. The more that people are collectively able to constrain and direct decisions that affect their well-being and their freedom, the more democracy there is. And the more that this control is equally shared among people, the more democracy there is. True democracy requires strong and equally shared popular control over the decisions that affect people's lives.